“I cannot—­I cannot see visitors, mamma!  It is quite—­quite impossible.”

And then Mrs. Brudenell made a resolution, which she also kept—­never to come to Brudenell Hall for another summer until Herman should return to his home and Berenice to her senses.  And having so decided, she abridged her stay and went away with her daughters to spend the remainder of the summer at some pleasant watering-place in the North.

And Berenice was once more left to solitude.

Now, Lady Hurstmonceux was not naturally cold, or proud, or unsocial; but as surely as brains can turn, and hearts break, and women die of grief, she was crazy, heart-broken, and dying.

She turned sick at the sight of every human face, because the one dear face she loved and longed for was not near.  The pastor of the parish, with the benevolent perseverence of a true Christian, continued to call at the Hall long after every other human creature had ceased to visit the place.  But Lady Hurstmonceux steadily refused to receive him.

She never went to church.  Her cherished sorrow grew morbid; her hopeless hope became a monomania; her life narrowed down to one mournful routine.  She went nowhere but to the turnstile on the turnpike, where she leaned upon the rotary cross, and watched the road.

Even to this day the pale, despairing, but most beautiful face of that young watcher is remembered in that neighborhood.

Only very recently a lady who had lived in that vicinity said to me, in speaking of this young forsaken wife—­this stranger in our land: 

“Yes, every day she walked slowly up that narrow path to the turnstile, and stood leaning on the cross and gazing up the road, to watch for him—­every day, rain or shine; in all weathers and seasons; for months and years.”

CHAPTER XIX.

NOBODY’S SON.

  Not blest? not saved?  Who dares to doubt all well
    With holy innocence?  We scorn the creed
  And tell thee truer than the bigots tell,—­
    That infants all are Jesu’s lambs indeed.

  —­Martin F. Tupper.

  But thou wilt burst this transient sleep,
  And thou wilt wake my babe to weep;
  The tenant of a frail abode,
  Thy tears must flow as mine have flowed: 
  And thou may’st live perchance to prove
  The pang of unrequited love.

  —­Byron.

Ishmael lived.  Poor, thin, pale, sick; sent too soon into the world; deprived of all that could nurture healthy infant life; fed on uncongenial food; exposed in that bleak hut to the piercing cold of that severe winter; tended only by a poor old maid who honestly wished his death as the best good that could happen to him—­Ishmael lived.

One day it occurred to Hannah that he was created to live.  This being so, and Hannah being a good churchwoman, she thought she would have him baptized.  He had no legal name; but that was no reason why he should not receive a Christian one.  The cruel human law discarded him as nobody’s child; the merciful Christian law claimed him as one “of the kingdom of Heaven.”  The human law denied him a name; the Christian law offered him one.